There's a video going around of a sitting governor doing a little shimmy in a crowd, grinning, and announcing into a microphone, "Not bad for an old white guy."
The day was Memorial Day. The place was George Floyd Square. And the chair with Tim Walz's name on it — at the Memorial Day program for the war dead a few miles away — sat empty the whole time.
Good grief. Read that again, because it doesn't get less insane on the second pass.
On Monday, May 25 — the day we set aside, the ONE day, to honor the men and women who came home in flag-draped boxes — the governor of Minnesota and former Democratic vice-presidential nominee laid flowers, swayed to the music, and danced at the "Rise & Remember" festival in Minneapolis. The festival marks the sixth anniversary of the death of George Floyd, who died with a rap sheet and a lethal dose of fentanyl in his system while being arrested for passing a fake $20 bill.
Walz was a listed speaker at the Memorial Day program at Fort Snelling National Cemetery. He didn't show. Senators Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith stood at the lectern instead, in front of rows of white headstones that go on past the horizon, while their governor was downtown getting his groove on.
So we have a choice of two ceremonies, both on Memorial Day, both involving the word "remember." At one of them are 170,000 graves of Americans who died for their country. At the other is a mural of a man who died of a drug overdose during an arrest. Guess which one the governor of Minnesota decided was worth dancing at.
He even said the quiet part into the microphone. "Not bad for an old white guy." That's the line. That's a man who knew a camera was on him and decided the moment called for a self-deprecating little joke about his own dance moves — at a memorial — on Memorial Day. The self-awareness of a houseplant.
Rep. Tom Emmer put it about as plainly as it can be put: "Prancing and dancing at a George Floyd event on Memorial Day is a disgrace to our fallen heroes." Veterans called it "a slap in the face." They're being generous. A slap in the face is at least directed AT you. This was worse — it was Walz forgetting you existed.
Here's the thing about Memorial Day that apparently needs explaining to a former public-school teacher. It is not "a day off." It is not "the unofficial start of summer." It is not "vibes and a mattress sale." It is the single day on the American calendar reserved for the people who died so that Tim Walz could grow up free enough to be this clueless. They bought him the country. He spent the afternoon they paid for dancing in front of a mural.
And notice what got the priority. Not a wreath. Not a salute. Not a minute of silence at the graves. A festival. With music. And a dance floor. The man triaged his own holiday calendar and decided the activist event downtown outranked the dead at the national cemetery. That's not an accident of scheduling. That's a revealed preference.
You want to know everything you need to know about a politician? Watch where he goes when he thinks both events are equally "optional." Walz had two invitations on the same day. One was somber and full of grieving families. The other had a beat. He picked the beat.
This is the part the cable shows will miss while they argue about whether the dance was "appropriate." The dance isn't the story. The empty chair is the story. Because what we just watched was a man with a national profile rank his sacred days right in front of us — and the war dead came in second to a guy who resisted arrest in 2020.
That ranking didn't start with Walz, and it won't end with him. There was a time both parties treated Memorial Day as untouchable ground — Reagan and Carter would never have been caught within a mile of a microphone that day saying anything but the names of the fallen. Somewhere in the last decade, half the country quietly swapped its calendar of saints. The fallen soldier got demoted. The fallen folk hero got a festival, a square renamed in his honor, and now a governor doing the Carlton in his memory. Mourn long enough at the wrong altar and you forget where the real one was.
And the math of this only runs one direction. There's no version of the next ten years where the "Rise & Remember" festival gets smaller and the Fort Snelling program gets bigger — not in a party that just watched its biggest Minnesota name no-show the cemetery and pay zero price for it. He'll do it again next year. So will the next guy. The empty chair at the veterans' service isn't a one-time gaffe. It's the new default, and Monday was just the first year nobody bothered to hide it.
Walz, for his part, seems to think it went great. "Not bad for an old white guy."
The men under those headstones at Fort Snelling can't dance. That's sort of the whole point of the day. He should try remembering them next year — assuming he can find a microphone that isn't already booked.